1 Sociology; Social Psychology

PART ONE THE GENERAL FEATURES OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

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CHAPTER I THE FALSE SEPARATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL FROM THE GROUP

I. INTRODUCTION

That man was not born to live alone is an old observation of more significance than is usually attributed it in suggesting matrimony to likely bachelors or to marriageable women. In fact, the individual is a concept quite as abstract and quite as open to criticism as the older theological doctrines concerning the origin of species, or the more recent notion that the contribution of heredity may be completely dissociated from that of environment in the make-up of the human adult. The doctrine of individualism, which got such a hold on Western thinking at the close of the Middle Ages and which in our social and economic system is so closely connected with the individualistic motive and with the individualistic notion of personal salvation, has never been given up. The social contract theory that originally man was a lonely, isolated creature roaming over the face of the earth and fighting with beasts and other men for food or sexual satisfactions, has been completely destroyed by logic and anthropology, but is nevertheless constantly being reaffirmed because it is so dear to our belief in independence, in self-sufficiency, and in individual power. According to this social contract notion, society began when two or three persons mutually agreed that they could get more protection and more food, as well as more satisfactions, if they banded together. Therefore, one of them, presumably the stronger, was elected president of the society, and the other two secretary and treasurer respectively, unless the president decided to take the latter office himself. We see so much of this sort of thing going on now in our own civilization that we imagine it to have been so at the outset. Furthermore, popular literature and common parlance about "cave man stuff" and "original nature" help this notion to stick with us.

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As preliminary to the first division of our work, therefore, we have introduced a selection which briefly states a standpoint fundamental to this entire book. For Cooley the essential nature of the social process is the dual relationship of the individual and the social group made up of other individuals representing, as they do, a type of social interplay at various points of contact.

Moreover, the individuals in a group are influenced on all sides by the cultural formulations which have come down to them from the past or which are actually in the making at any particular time or place.

Thus social psychology must take into account this "organic" process of social living. It is false and unsatisfactory to separate the individual from the social milieu in which he lives, moves, and has his being. In subsequent papers we shall see this becoming more evident in the concrete example of life. The reader should consult particularly the papers of Kunkel (no. 6), Chapin (no. 7), and Child (no. 55).

II. MATERIALS

1. Individual and Society: An Organic Process¹

A separate individual is an abstraction unknown to experience, and so likewise is society when regarded as something apart from individuals. The real thing is Human Life, which may be considered either in an individual aspect or in a social, that is to say general, aspect; but is always, as a matter of fact, both individual and general. In other words, "society" and "individuals" do not denote separable phenomena, but are simply collective and distributive aspects of the same thing, the relation between them being like that between other expressions one of which denotes a group as a whole and the other the members of the group, such as the army and the soldiers, the class and the students, and so on. This holds true of any social aggregate, great or small; of a family, a city, a nation, a race; of mankind as a whole: no matter how extensive, complex, or enduring a group may be, no good reason can be given for regarding it as essentially different in this respect from the smallest, simplest, or most transient.

So far, then, as there is any difference between the two, it is rather 5 in our point of view than in the object we are looking at: when we speak of society, or use any other collective term, we fix our minds upon some general view of the people concerned, while when we speak of individuals, we disregard the general aspect and think of them as if they were separate. Society, or any complex group, may, to ordinary observation, be a very different thing from all of its members viewed one by one—as a man who beheld General Grant’s army from Missionary Ridge would have seen something other than he would by approaching every soldier in it. There may, in all such cases, be a system or organization in the whole that is not apparent in the parts. In this sense, and in no other, is there a difference between society and the individuals of which it is composed; a difference not residing in the facts themselves but existing to the observer on account of the limits of his perception. A complete view of society would also be a complete view of all the individuals, and vice versa; there would be no difference between them.

And just as there is no society or group that is not a collective view of persons, so there is no individual who may not be regarded as a particular view of social groups. He has no separate existence; through both the hereditary and the social factors in his life a man is bound into the whole of which he is a member, and to consider him apart from it is quite as artificial as to consider society apart from individuals.

Of course the view which I regard as sound, is that individuality is neither prior in time nor lower in moral rank than sociality; but that the two have always existed side by side as complementary aspects of the same thing, and that the line of progress is from a lower to a higher type of both, not from the one to the other.

Finally, there is the social faculty view. This expression might be used to indicate those conceptions which regard the social as including only a part, often a rather definite part, of the individual. Human nature is thus divided into individualistic or non-social tendencies or faculties, and those that are social. Thus, certain emotions, as love, are social; others, as fear or anger, are unsocial or individualistic. Some writers have even treated the intelligence as an individualistic faculty, and have found sociality only in some sorts of emotion or sentiment.

The opinion I hold is that man’s psychical outfit is not divisible into the social and the non-social; but that he is all social in a large sense, is all a part of the common human life, and that his social or moral progress consists less in the aggrandizement of particular faculties or instincts and the suppression of others, than in the discipline of all 6 with reference to a progressive organization of life which we know in thought as conscience.

III. CLASS ASSIGNMENTS

A. Questions and Exercises

1. List the groups to which you belong. Indicate how your habits and attitudes vary according to which group you are with.

2. Show how one may view the personality first from the angle of his group membership: race, nation, business or vocational organization, fraternity, city, church, neighborhood and family. Then show how one may view the personality from the angle of the isolated individual.

What difference does it make in the type of fact which one uncovers about the personality when one uses one or the other standpoint?

3. Is there any type of behavior which is not socially colored?

B. Topics for Class Reports

1. Review Gault’s Social Psychology Ch. II, pp. 13–17 on "The Sense of Social Unity." Illustrate this fact from the behavior of people in this country during the World War.

2. Review for the class Sherrington’s paper cited in the bibliography. Discuss his point of view about social integration. Compare with Child’s view (Cf: bibliography).

C. Suggestions for Longer Written Papers

1. Cooley’s Organic Theory of Society.

2. The Relation of Society to Personality.

IV. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barnes, H. E. (ed.) The History and Prospects of the Social Sciences, New York, 1925. (Consult Ch. IV "Social Psychology" and Ch. V "Cultural Anthropology" for material on the social and cultural setting of behavior.)

Child, C. M. Physiological Foundations of Behavior, New York, 1924. (Chs. XVI, XVII.)

Cooley, C. H. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York, 1902. (Especially Chs. I, IV, X. For standpoint unsurpassed.)

Cooley, C. H. Social Organization. New York, 1909. (Chs. I, II.)

Cooley, C. H. Social Process. New York, 1918.

Durkheim, É. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York, 1915.

Follett, M. P. Creative Experience. New York, 1924.

Gault, R. H. Social Psychology. New York, 1923. (Ch. II. The discussion on sense of social solidarity is good.)

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Goldenweiser, A. A. "Psychology and Culture," Pub. Am. Sociol. Society, 1925: XIX: 15–23.

Lévy-Bruhl, L. How Natives Think. New York, 1925.

Lévy-Bruhl, L. Primitive Mentality. New York, 1923.

Sherrington, C. S. "Some Aspects of Animal Mechanism" Science; 1922: LVI: 345–54. Also in Ment. Hyg., 1923: VII: 1–19. (Cf. especially the section on the integration of animal mechanisms at the level of social life.)

¹ Reprinted by permission from C. H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order, pp. 1–2; 3; 10–11; 12. New York. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902.